


There's no choice outside your mind when your heart is overthrown

by Francine2869



Category: Sen Çal Kapımı (TV)
Genre: Angst, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Resolution
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-14
Updated: 2020-12-14
Packaged: 2021-03-11 01:54:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,377
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28067349
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Francine2869/pseuds/Francine2869
Summary: A conversation that could happen at the beginning of the next episode (Bolum 23) to ... clear the air, shall we say.
Relationships: Serkan Bolat/Eda Yildiz
Comments: 14
Kudos: 64





	There's no choice outside your mind when your heart is overthrown

**Author's Note:**

> Title from song lyrics I first heard on this beautiful Lari edits video on Youtube: 'Eda x Serkan || Don't Leave'  
> Check it out!

*~*

  
Serkan closed the door behind Balca and turned to look at Eda. She was quiet on the couch, stroking Sirius' head with distant eyes.

"Eda?"

She seemed to flinch - to come back from whatever distant place she was visiting.

"Mmm?"

The look she gave him was still shadowed, her eyes drifting to the wall behind him as he approached and sat down beside her.

"I'm glad you decided to stay - I didn't expect Balca to stop by tonight. I wasn't expecting anyone but I hoped that I'd see you at my door."

She nodded and pulled her legs up underneath her as she pulled her jacket a little tighter around her. Serkan wished she would lean into him, take his hand and rest her head on his shoulder. When he'd come up with this idea about her surprising him he'd assumed that having her in his home alone with him would allow them to relax and start to get back to the way they were before. But now that she was here and obviously still struggling to forgive him the night stretched ahead of them - and he was suddenly unsure of what to do next.

"Serkan - " Eda started before taking a deep breath and turning her body towards him. He drew one leg up and turned to her, relaxing into the cushions behind him.

"The night that you broke up with me - what did you do after I left?"

"Ah, pardon?" His mouth dried up and the words came out as a croak. Of all the thing she could have said, the conversations she could have started...

"What did you do? I know I came to see you later but what did you do inbetween?"

"I uh -" he rubbed his hands together, not sure of where this was going. "I went home."

"And did what?"

"What does it matter Eda?" It came out terse and short. He didn't want to spend any of their time together reliving the worst night of his life.

She sighed and reached out for his hand with one of hers, the other settled into the dark fur behind Sirius' collar. He took it eagerly, slotting their fingers together. The warmth of her skin settled something in him than had been searching for her since the night in question.

"It matters. To me. I want to know what you were thinking."

"You know what I was thinking, why I made the decision I did."

"You told me - that you were willing to risk losing me because you didn't want to hurt me with the truth."

He nodded, tracing a fingertip over the back of her hand and around her wrist. He dropped his gaze, unable to look into her eyes when the echoes of how she'd looked at him that night still haunted him.

"You know that I never set out to hurt you. I honestly thought that letting you go - even though it was killing me - was the best thing to do for you. That if you ever found out about my father's connection to your parents' death... I couldn't let you be hurt that way. I didn't want you to have to remember losing them every time you looked at me."

Eda tugged on his hand until he looked up at her again.

"And mentally I can understand that. I'm not agreeing that it was the best choice but I can see why you thought lying to me would protect my feelings."

"Eda it was only to - "

"I know Serkan. I know. Believe me - the morning Selin showed up here and you told me everything I couldn't believe that you'd done that to me, and I thought I'd never speak to you again, let alone forgive you."

"But now?"

"Now I'm willing to listen, to hear you out and try to understand how you could have ever given up on us."

Serkan sat upright and moved closer, making sure that he was looking into her eyes.

"I _NEVER_ gave up on us. I _NEVER_ stopped loving you. Letting you walk away that night was the hardest thing I've _ever_ had to do. You have to know that by now."

Eda smiled sadly, reaching with her free hand to place her palm over his chest.

"I do. I know that you were hurt too and that it wasn't an easy decision to make."

She dropped her hand to rest on top of their entwined fingers.

"And I wish I could say that I feel the same."

Serkan's heart dropped into his stomach.

"What," he swallowed, "what do you mean?"

She took his face in her hands, her big eyes warm and luminescent with unshed tears.

"Don't misunderstand me. I love you and there's nothing I want more than to be with you."

He blew out a breath and leaned forward until their foreheads were touching, his hands covering hers on his face. He kissed each of her palms before taking a deep breath, finally feeling the connection between them surge back to life. For weeks there'd been an ache under his ribs, gnawing at him.

" _Eda_."

He leaned forward and kissed her lightly. Her mouth was warm and wet with tears. It wasn't until she brushed a thumb over his cheek that he realized some of them were his.

After a moment she pulled back and let go of him, standing to walk to the other side of the coffee table. He moved too and started to stand up until she said:

"No, stay there. I need to say this and I can't think when you're too close to me."

He sat back again, his thought churning at the serious look on her face as the distance between them seemed to widen by the minute.

"Okay," he held his hands up, "tell me. Whatever you need to say. I'm ready to listen."

She looked at him with another sad smile.

"You don't know how long I've been waiting to hear that. How many times I just wanted to shake you and tell you to listen to me."

"Why didn't you?"

She gave him a look, hands on her hips.

"Really? We were barely speaking to each other as it was - how was I supposed to tell you everything that was going on inside of me when it seemed like you resented any moment you had to spend in my presence?"

Serkan shook his head. "I never resented you-"

"I know," Eda broke in, "I'm not trying to..."

She trailed off and looked at him, running her hands through her hair.

"Let me start again. And just let me get it out. Don't say anything."

He nodded, setting his elbows on his knees and clasping his hands under his chin.

Eda paced back and forth a few times, the light of the fireplace flickering over her skin and making Serkan's mind drift. She stopped in front of the large windows on the other side of the room.

"The night you broke up with me - I knew something was wrong. I asked you if you were alright and you told me that you were fine but I could see in your eyes that something was bothering you. I asked if you'd figured things out, if you were ready to talk to me. Do you remember what you said?"

Serkan scratched at his jaw, wishing that she'd come closer so he could at least touch her while they relieved these horrible moments.

"You told me there was something you'd wanted to talk about for a few days. You were so calm, like we were discussing the weather, or what to have for dinner. Then the next words out of your mouth were that you wanted to end our relationship."

Serkan stood, stalking towards her.

"Eda why are you bringing this up now? Haven't we been through enough?"

She held her hands up in front of her and he took a step back, fists clenched at his sides.

"You said that it wasn't working out. I thought you were joking at first - do you remember?"

He nodded grimly.

"It was the only way I could possibly make sense of what you were saying. You just stood there and told me that we weren't _working out_ and that your job was your priority and I was getting in the way. You wouldn't even look at me. It made me sick to my stomach."

She rubbed a hand over her chest, her breath hitching as she spoke.

"It was like you'd disappeared. The real you - the sweet, caring man I'd fallen in love with was not the person standing in front of me that night."

Her eyes were glazed over and sweat broke out over his brow as he helplessly watched her remember that night.

"You said if our relationship continued that you would lose everything: your job, your career, yourself."

"Eda please, _please_ don't do this."

She shook her head.

"You told me that I'd known from the beginning who you were and that you hadn't changed."

She sobbed then, holding her hands over her mouth and he couldn't stand it anymore. He wrapped his arms around her and buried his face in her hair.

"Stop it, stop torturing yourself. Let it go!"

She took a deep breath and then pushed against his chest, pushed him away until he had to let go of her.

"You never even took your hands out of your _fucking_ _pockets_. You just stood there, looked right into my eyes, exactly like you are tonight and you told me it was over. _Bitti_."

The word hung between them, strangling the air until there was no oxygen left in the room.

Until Eda exploded.

"Do you have any idea how that felt?! To think - even for a moment - that the reason you left me, that you stopped loving me was because -"

"I NEVER stopped - "

"Your job was more important? Earlier that day in the parking lot you were _so_ angry. You told me my behaviour made you sick. SICK Serkan!"

She grabbed a small vase off the table and threw it, startling Sirius who whined and pawed at the couch.

"You told me that being _alone_ would be better than being with me and less than 12 hours after that we were over."

Eda fell onto the couch, hunching over and rocking as her tears fell uncontrollably. Sirius pressed his large head into her leg until she hugged him and hid her in his soft pelt.

Serkan sat gently beside her and rubbed his hand over her back. He'd never thought about how Eda must have felt that night. He'd been so consumed with his own pain and his own grief over losing her that it had blinded him to the reality of their situation.

"I - I'm so sorry Eda."

They sat in uncomfortable silence, Serkan staring blankly out into the dark night as Eda's sobs quieted into a few hiccups and a sniffle. Serkan pulled a few kleenex from a box on the table and handed them to her. She wiped at her face for a moment before turning and throwing herself into his arms. He sighed and squeezed her tight before pulling them both to lean on the back of the couch.

When she spoke again it was in a quiet tone. 

"When you texted me that evening and wanted to meet I was willing to do just about anything to make it work between us. I told myself that we just needed to talk, that we could figure things out if we were just honest with each other. I wanted to know what you were thinking and feeling and why what I was doing was so wrong, so... _offensive_ to you."

She burrowed into his chest as she said this, sounding more young and vulnerable than he'd ever imagined a firebrand like Eda Yildiz could be.

"I just wanted to make you happy again, I just wanted you to love me."

He rubbed her arms and stroked her hair, wishing that he could go back in time and stop himself from putting any of this in motion. Stop himself from listening at her window, from walking away. What would have happened if he'd just knocked on her door that night and told her the truth. How different things could have been if he'd given her, given _them_ a chance to deal with it together.

"But you - you'd _disappeared_. The man that I loved was gone and all you would tell me was that I was getting in the way of your work. Do you know how much I blamed myself? Do you know how much it hurt that you just didn't want - me? I started to go crazy trying to figure out where I'd gone wrong, what mistakes I'd made. The girls kept telling me it wasn't my fault but ... they're my friends, they're supposed to say that."

He made a mental note to make sure he thanked those wonderful women. No matter what they thought of him (he did have to smile when he could almost hear Melo calling him 'Enişte!'), they had been there for Eda when we wasn't, when he couldn't be.

"It felt like I was drowning when I walked away from you. I couldn't breathe. I still don't really remember the rest of that night."

Thank Allah he'd instructed the driver to wait for her and make sure she got home safely. He'd tell her another time how he'd felt so alone standing on that terrace - a bone deep loneliness that he hadn't felt since he'd watched his father drive away from his first boarding school years ago. How his hands had gone numb and his legs had given out as he slid down the stone wall until he was sitting in the darkness trying to catch his breath. The weight of days, weeks, of years ahead of him without her had settled over his shoulders until he finally dropped his head into his hands and forced himself to take one shaky breath after another.

She pulled her head back on his shoulder until they could look at each other.

"You have to understand Serkan. I was _all in_. I truly fell in love with you and gave you my heart. Maybe I'm impulsive and naive and always want to think the best of people, but you knew that going in. You knew very well who I was after everything we'd been through. To me, it seemed like you suddenly decided that being in a relationship with me was unthinkable, a mistake."

She sat up and he wiped her face of tears before she took his hands in her lap again.

"That's why - right now - I can't just fall back into those feelings again because I'm not that same person. I've changed and there's a small part of me that wonders if I'll ever be able to completely trust you, that's waiting for the something to go wrong because now I know that things aren't so ' _angelic_ ' in the real world. I know now that there's hurt and pain that hope and happiness can't always cure. I had all of these feelings for you still inside of me and you cut me out of your heart and left me with nothing - I didn't know how I could have gotten things so wrong between us. _Then_ while I was trying to deal with losing you it started to seem like you didn't want to let me go which was _so_ unfair - you had to have know that Serkan."

He nodded, feeling ashamed of how obviously he'd tried to hang onto her while at the same time demanding that she leave him alone. No wonder the poor woman was confused.

"It was like one step forward and two steps back with you. One minute I'd feel so close to you again, like maybe there was a way we could... and the next minute you'd make me so angry that I wanted to scream. Or worse - you'd act like I wasn't even there, that I was nothing and had always been nothing to you. Not to mention everything with Selin..."

"Lets, uh," Serkan cleared his throat, "let's maybe not talk about her right now - okay?"

Eda nodded and looked into his eyes, squeezing his hands as she said, "I am sorry that you've had to deal with this Serkan, that your father kept this secret from us and it must have been terrible to find out when we we'd just found each other. I know how much you've missed having your father in your life and even though I have my own issues with him I'd never want to cause more problems between you two."

He lifted and hand and brushed a lock of hair behind her ear. Once again he marvelled at how well this woman understood him - how she could still think about his happiness even when her heart was breaking. How had he ever thought he could let her go?

"I miss my mom and dad everyday. No matter what Alptekin Bey has done, no matter how angry I am at him, I will always want you to have your father in your life."

Serkan shook his head, lifting the back of her hands to his lips to kiss them. " _Eda_ , Benim sevgilim."

She took a deep breath, then sighed before leaning against him again. She wrapped her arms around his waist and tucked her head under his chin, nuzzling into his chest as Serkan's hands roamed restlessly over her back.

After a moment: "So maybe I'm testing you. Maybe I'm pushing you so hard to change because I'm waiting for the day you decide that I'm asking too much and that I'm not worth it."

Serkan started to speak but felt her shake her head.

"I keep telling myself that you won't leave me again, that you never stopped loving me but deep down inside... that pain is still there and sometimes it feels like it just happened. That pit in the bottom of my stomach that reminds me that I can't let myself trust you with my heart again because I almost didn't survive when you broke it."

He buried his face in her hair as his tears fell silently.

"I want you to know that I love you and there are moments where I feel like I did before, moments where our connection seems so strong that it's impossible that there's anything in this world that could come between us. But then I remember that night, I remember how it felt watching you simply stand there as you shattered my world because you couldn't even try to love me."

She was quiet and still for so long he thought she might have gone to sleep. He rubbed his cheek against her hair and took a deep breath, feeling his heart beat more strongly than ever before.

"For you, Eda," he thought. "My heart beats for you."

She moved slowly, reluctantly out of his arms and wiped her face, a small but relieved smile turning the corners of her lips up. She looked away to pet Sirius for a moment as he moaned and rolled over, always ready for a belly scratch. Eda huffed out a laugh and turned back to Serkan with a slightly bigger smile on her face.

"All of this to say that I know I've been a little... difficult lately," with two fingers over his mouth to shush any words he tried to say in protest. "But you have to know that I want this, want _us_ and our future to work with all my heart."

All he could do was nod, pressing those same fingers to his lips as he kissed them in promise.

Sometime later he took both of her hands in one of his and lead her upstairs. They took turns in the washroom, rinsing their faces clean and changing into soft clothes to sleep in. By the time they were curled up under the covers of the large bed together Eda could barely keep her eyes open.

"Sleep, askim," Serkan said as he stroked her hair and down her back. "I'll be here."

"Soz?"

"Soz."

*~*

**Author's Note:**

> Whew. It's amazing how time passes when you're immersed in the rich world of make believe :-) I hope this seems somewhat realistic - I know some people are having trouble with Eda's behaviour the last few episode (I admit I've cringed a few times myself). But I went back and watched the "break up" scene again and thinking about how it would feel if you didn't know/see everything that we do as viewers - that was a pretty shitty way to have your relationship end, no? So this was one way I thought her behaviour could be explained. This was written in one sitting with no proofread so please forgive any mistakes. Thanks for reading!


End file.
